SUMMER CAMP
“Hack the World”

Hack the World with Creativity Utilizing Democratized Technologies

The Japan Foundation Asia Center and Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences [IAMAS] will hold “Hack the World Summer Camp”, a special one-week intensive workshop on the theme of technology and creativity with participants from Japan and overseas.

Themed around the rich experiments in technology and creativity currently happening around the world, this workshop brings together participants from various countries and regions to learn practical ways to design society, communities and local areas based on the guidance of specialists in interaction design, media design, media art, and social design. In addition to studying the foundations of digital fabrication and the Internet of Things, participants will work in groups and join hands-on tours in order to acquire the means to foster creativity via a three-fold process of making, telling and thinking. By learning not only about technology and production but also theory through practical experience, the know-how cultivated by this workshop will return organically to the participants' individual activities and their communities. The one-week intensive curriculum promotes wide-ranging exchange and dialogue between participants, allowing them to share problems and understanding about each other's communities and homes, and helping to build a network of the next generation of digital creative talent.

Schedule

Day 1

09:00 - 09:20

Introduction / Welcome from organizers

09:20 - 12:00

Self introduction

13:00 - 13:30

Facility tour

13:30 - 14:00

Lecture #1 ( Ryota Kuwakubo )

14:30 - 17:00

Hands-on ( Shigeru Kobayashi )

17:30 - 18:30

Lecture #2 ( Kanta Horio )

19:00 - 21:00

Welcome party

Day 2

09:10 - 10:15

Lecture #3 on a train ( Tarumi railway )

10:30 - 15:00

Fieldwork in Neo

15:31 - 16:38

Reflection on a train

Day 3

10:00 - 12:30

Idea sketching

14:00 - 17:00

Make-a-thon

Day 4

10:00 - 17:00

Open studio

Day 5

10:00 - 17:00

Optional tour

Day 6

10:00 - 12:00

Presentation and review

Day 7

10:00 - 12:00

Make-a-thon

13:30 - 15:30

Presentation

16:00 - 18:00

Reflection and documentation

19:00 - 21:00

Farewell party

Report

Venue

IAMAS

The Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences is referred to and well known by its abbreviation: IAMAS.

IAMAS opened its doors as an educational institution that upholds a fusion of advanced technology and artistic creation as its founding principle and produces new culture, as well as a hub of cultivation for new expressionists in information societies.

Innovation Studio

A studio equipped with 3D printers, laser cutters, digital fabrication machines like CNC, and 3D modeling machines. The Innovation Studio is a hub for everyone to develop their ideas while creating prototypes that can be seen, touched, and felt.

Neo

Neo district is one of the district in Motosu City in Gifu Prefecture. IAMAS has done a project in this district “ Neo Co-creation” since 2015. In this project, we renovated an old building in there– which is continuing to become more of a marginal area – and created “Neokoza”, a base of operations where people in the area and creators inside and outside the region interact and work together. Through our activities where we question and think about our livelihoods with nature, energy, and production activities, and then create something, we search for a new society that hinges on co-creation.

Participants

Jun KameiJAPAN

Material Design, Product Design

Akihiro KatoJAPAN

Front-end Engineer

Yikyoung Kim KOREA

Graphic design, Illustration

Kalaya KovidvisithTHAILAND

Architectural design

June Low Cheng YenMALAYSIA

Writing, Ideation, Sex Education

Wryneth Gay Gaong MayapitPHILIPPINES

Local youth education and empowerment, cultural training and community theater workshop.

Praichayon PundaTHAILAND

Thoriq SalafiINDONESIA

Eduardo valente Villar do Valle BRAZIL

Yap Weng NamMALAYSIA

Graphic Design

Yuichi YazakiJAPAN

data visualization & user interface.

Lecturers

Shigeru KobayashiProfessor of the Research Center for Industrial Culture, IAMAS

He worked for a digital musical instrument company as a sound designer and a software engineer. He designed Open Source Hardware such as Gainer and Arduino Fio (with SparkFun Electronics) and wrote books on physical computing and prototyping (published in Japanese, Korean and Formosan). He also won the red dot award: design concept in 2011 as an interaction designer. Recently, he has been facilitating cross-industry innovation projects to create innovation by multiplying people from local and information technology industries.

Tomoko KanayamaDirector and professor of the Research Center for Industrial Culture, IAMAS

Born in Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture. Her main research themes are regional community, communication, the empowerment of citizens and media. Recently, she has been working on the design to insert the design, art and manufacturing of IAMAS into the regional society and thereby create new needs. Her main literary works include Community Media (Keio University Press), Strategic Media Use of Nonprofit (GAKUBUNSHA), Social Capital and Citizen Consciousness in Net era (Keio University Press) among others.

Takahiro KobayashiProfessor of the Media Creation department

Born in Gifu Prefecture in 1969. He has a doctorate in research on fruit harvesting systems that pair together position measurement technology that uses image processing, and soft robot hand mechanisms. In recent years, while developing devices for disabled people and those that are not proficient with IT, he has been conducting trials with agricultural themes. After realizing a dead-end in the small scale (general scale in Japan) rice cultivation, his immediate concern is to aim for the implementation of sustainable farming by doing things such as establishing agricultural facilities equipped with solar power generation in farmlands.

James GibsonAssociate Professor of the Media Creation department, IAMAS

Before moving to Japan in 2005 he worked as a Service Designer at live|work and a Human Interface & Research Designer at Sony Design Centre Europe & Tokyo. Currently researching the relationships between design, craft & art, and their roles in our media-rich lifestyles, while exploring ways to tackle social, environmental, & sustainable design issues.

After creating “BITMAN”, a collaboration work with Maywa Denki, in 1998, he began creating works that utilized electronics. Since then, he has created an original style that is referred to as “device art”. After the 2010 presentation of his installation “The Tenth Sentiment”, he has been undertaking works that, through the use of light and shadow, spin together the experiences of the viewer. His other representative works include “Video Bulb”, “PLX”, and “Nikodama”

Kanta HorioArtist / Engineer

His performance and installation works are assembled with his self-made machines for generating spontaneous activities of objects or interactions between sound, light, and vibration. He develops electronic devices for commissioned projects as well, now focusing on musical instruments combining user interface and physical vibration. His works were shown in several international festivals and exhibitions including Sónar (Barcelona, Spain, 2006), Time Based Art Festival (Portland, US, 2007), EXIT festival (Paris, France, 2010), Manifestation internationale d’art de Québec (Canada, 2012), MEDIA/ART KITCHEN (Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Yamaguchi, Aomori, 2013-2014).http://kanta.but.jp/

Organizer

The Japan Foundation Asia Cener

The Japan Foundation is Japan's principal institution dedicated to carrying out comprehensive international cultural exchange programs throughout the world. The Asia Center, established within the Japan Foundation in April 2014, is a specialized unit with the goal to connect people, expand networks, and develop cultural programs across Asia. As the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics lie ahead in 2020, through projects in such diverse fields as music, theater, film, sports, Japanese language education and other academic exchanges, the Asia Center, in cooperation with the Foundation’s overseas offices, pursues and supports various forms of activities between Asian communities.

Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences [IAMAS]

IAMAS, a master’s level graduate school launched by Gifu Prefecture in 2001.
It enjoys an international reputation as a limited enrollment graduate program, with a full complement of highly qualified instructors. IAMAS was founded on the principle of exploring the convergence of arts and sciences.
It is a school that combines progressive technological development and cultural trends to propose advanced artistic expression, design innovation, and ideals for new community and manufacturing techniques. IAMAS aims to educate socially aware “creatives” through an intensive research and hands-on practice. Since relocating to the Softopia Japan area in 2014, IAMAS has developed activities around a ‘field-style’ campus that is open to both local and regional communities, thus creating a unique open space research and educational institution. The features of IAMAS’s research education are its social implementations that use projects as their linchpins, team-teaching by faculty from various disciplines, and its enriched curriculum where students obtain specialized as well as comprehensive knowledge.
Also, the collaboration between students from various disciplines (art and design, ideology, science and technology, sociology, etc.) helps students stimulate one another, letting them broaden their individual skills and knowledge in a research environment with an elite selected few. The strength of its network of graduates is another of IAMAS’s appealing points.